Participants write down significant events and order them chronologicallySource: Agile Retrospectives

Divide into groups with 5 or less people each. Distribute cards and markers. Give participants 10min to note down memorable and / or personally significant events. It's about gathering many perspectives. Consensus would be detrimental. All participants post their cards and order them. It's okay to add cards on the fly. Analyze.Color Coding can help to see patterns, e.g.:

Walk through each story handled by the team and look for possible improvementsSource: Corinna Baldauf

Preparation: Collect all stories handled during the iteration and bring them along to the retrospective. In a group (10 people max.) read out each story. For each one discuss whether it went well or not. If it went well, capture why. If not discuss what you could do differently in the future.Variants: You can use this for support tickets, bugs or any combination of work done by the team.

Participants match quality cards to their own Start-Stop-Continue-proposalsSource: Agile Retrospectives

Preparation: ca. 20 quality cards, i.e. colored index cards with unique words such as fun, on time, clear, meaningful, awesome, dangerous, nasty Each team member has to write at least 9 index cards: 3 each with things to start doing, keep doing and stop doing. Choose one person to be the first judge. The judge turns the first quality card. From their own cards each member chooses the best match for this word and places it face down on the table.The last one to choose has to take their card back on their hand. The judge shuffles all submitted cards, turns them one by one and rules the best fit = winning card. All submitted cards are discarded. The submitter of the winning card receives the quality card. The person left of the judge becomes the new judge. Stop when everyone runs out of cards (6-9 rounds). Whoever has the most quality cards wins. Debrief by asking for takeaways. (Game is based on 'Apples to Apples')

Draw a speedboat onto a flip chart paper. Give it a strong motor as well as a heavy anchor. Team members silently write on sticky notes what propelled the team forward and what kept it in place. One idea per note. Post the stickies motor and anchor respectively. Read out each one and discuss how you can increase 'motors' and cut 'anchors'.

Variation: Some people add an iceberg in the back of the image. The iceberg represents obstacles they already see coming.

Draw a speedboat onto a flip chart paper. Give it a strong motor as well as a heavy anchor. Team members silently write on sticky notes what propelled the team forward and what kept it in place. One idea per note. Post the stickies motor and anchor respectively. Read out each one and discuss how you can increase 'motors' and cut 'anchors'.

Variation: Some people add an iceberg in the back of the image. The iceberg represents obstacles they already see coming.

Put up two posters labeled 'proud' and 'sorry'. Team members write down one instance per sticky note. When the time is up have everyone read out their note and post it to the appropriate poster.Start a short conversation e.g. by asking:

The team nominates stories for awards and reflects on the winnersSource: Marin Todorov

Display all stories completed in the last iterations on a board. Create 3 award categories (i.e. boxes on the board):

Best story

Most annoying story

... 3rd category invented by the team ...

Ask the team to 'nominate' stories by putting them in one of the award boxes. For each category: Dot-vote and announce the winner. Ask the team why they think the user story won in this category and let the team reflect on the process of completing the tasks - what went good or wrong.

What can others expect of you? What can you expect of them?Source: Valerie Santillo

Give each team member a piece of paper. The lower half is blank. The top half is divided into two sections:

What my team mates can expect from me

What I expect from my team mates

Each person fills out the top half for themselves. When everyone is finished, they pass their paper to the left and start reviewing the sheet that was passed to them. In the lower half they write what they personally expect from that person, sign it and pass it on.When the papers made it around the room, take some time to review and share observations.

Draw a big square and divide it into 2 columns. Label them 'Interesting' and 'Dull'. Let the team write down everything they did last iteration on stickies and put it into the appropriate column. Have them add a rough estimate of how long it took on each of their own stickies. Now add a horizontal line so that your square has 4 quadrants. Label the top row 'Short' (took hours) and the bottom row 'Long' (took days). Rearrange the stickies in each column. The long and dull stories are now nicely grouped to 'attack' in subsequent phases.

This is a round-based activity. In each round you ask the team a question, they write down their answers (gives everyone time to think) and then read them out to the others.Questions proposed for Software Development teams:

When was the last time you were really engaged / animated / productive? What did you do? What had happened? How did it feel?

From an application-/code-perspective: What is the awesomest stuff you've built together? What makes it great?

Of the things you built for this company, which has the most value? Why?

When did you work best with the Product Owner? What was good about it?

When was your collaboration best?

What was your most valuable contribution to the developer community (of this company)? How did you do it?

Leave your modesty at the door: What is the most valuable skill / character trait you contribute to the team? Examples?

Write down what you can never ever say out loudSource: Unknown, via Vanessa

Do you suspect that unspoken taboos are holding back the team? Consider this silent activity: Stress confidentiality ('What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas') and announce that all notes of this activity will be destroyed in the end. Only afterwards hand out a piece of paper to each participant to write down the biggest unspoken taboo in the company. When everyone's done, they pass their paper to their left-hand neighbors. The neighbors read and may add comments. Papers are passed on and on until they return to their authors. One last read. Then all pages are ceremoniously shredded or (if you're outside) burned.

Collect the answers, either stickies on flip charts or in a digital tool if you're distributed. Form 4 subgroups, on for each L, read all notes, identify patterns and report their findings to the group. Use this as input for the next phase.

Explain an example of Value Stream Mapping. (If you're unfamiliar with it, check out this video or this printable 1-pager.) Ask the team to draw a value stream map of their process from the point of view of a single user story. If necessary, ask them to break into small groups, and facilitate the process if they need it. Look at the finished map. Where are long delays, choke points and bottlenecks?

Brainstorm what to repeat and what behaviours to avoidSource: Luis Goncalves

Head 2 flip charts with 'Repeat' and 'Avoid' respectively. The participants write issues for the columns on sticky notes - 1 per issue. You can also color code the stickies. Example categories are 'People', 'Process', 'Technology', ... Let everyone read out their notes and post them to the appropriate column. Are all issues unanimous?

Is information not flowing as well as it needs to? Do you suspect bottlenecks? Visualize the ways information flows to find starting points for improvements. If you want to look at one specific flow (e.g. product requirements, impediments, ...) check out Value Stream Mapping (#79). For messier situations try something akin to Cause-Effect-Diagrams (#25). Look at the finished drawing. Where are delays or dead ends?

Create a histogram on how well ritual meetings went during the iterationSource: Fanny Santos

Prepare a flip chart for each meeting that recurs every iteration, (e.g. the Scrum ceremonies) with a horizontal scale from 1 ('Did not meet expectations') to 5 ('Exceeds Expectations'). Each team member adds a sticky note based on their rating for each of these meetings. Let the team discuss why some meetings do not have a rating of 5. You can discuss improvements as part of this activity or in a later activity such as Perfection Game (#20) or Plus \& Delta (#40).

Produce the team's twitter timeline for the iterationSource: Thomas Guest

Ask participants to write 3 or more tweets on sticky notes about the iteration they've just completed. Tweets could be on the iteration as a whole, on individual stories, a rant, or shameless self-promotion - as long as they are brief. Hash tags, emoticons, attached pictures, @usernames are all welcome. Allow ten minutes to write the tweets, then arrange them in a timeline and discuss themes, trends etc. Now invite participants to favorite, retweet and write replies to the tweets, again following up with discussion.

Which things are clear and feel good and which feel vague and implicit?Source: Katrin Dreyer

Use this activity if you suspect the team to make lots of unconscious decisions hardly ever questioning anything. You can figure out what things need to be talked about to get an explicit grasp of them.

You need:

about 3 metres of string as the clothesline

about 20 clothes pins

a white shirt (cut from paper)

a pair of dirty pants (cut from paper)

Hang up the clothesline and mark the middle, e.g. with a ribbon. Hang up the clean shirt on one side and the dirty pants on the other. Ask the team now to write items onto index cards for each of the categories. Hang up the notes with clothespins and re-arrange them into clusters. Now the team picks 2 'dirty' and 2 'clean' topics they want to talk about, e.g. by dot voting.

Imagine your last iteration was a movie and write a review about itSource: Isabel Corniche

Introduce the activity by asking: Imagine your last iteration was a movie and you had to write a review:

What was the genre of the movie (e.g. horror, drama, ...)?

What was the (central) theme? Describe in 2-3 words.

Was there a big twist (e.g. a bad guy)?

What was the ending like (e.g. happy-end, cliffhanger) and did you expect it?

What was your personal highlight?

Would you recommend it to a colleague?

Give each team member a piece of paper and 5 minutes to silently ponder the questions. In the meantime (or before the session) divide a flip chart in 7 columns headed with 'Genre', 'Theme', 'Twist', 'Ending', 'Expected?', 'Highlight', 'Recommend?'. When everyone has finished writing, fill out the flip chart while each participant reads out their notes. Afterwards look at the finished table and lead a discussion about

Collect some news headlines in advance and take them to the retrospective to serve as examples. Try to gather a mixture of headlines: factual, opinion, review. Place the headlines where everyone can see them. Hand out sticky notes. Give team members 10 minutes to come up with their own headlines describing newsworthy aspects of the sprint. Encourage short, punchy headlines. Stick the completed headlines to a whiteboard. If any cover the same news item, combine them. If any are unclear, ask the reporter for details. Vote on which news items to discuss and analyse in more depth.

Collect what team members perceived as good, bad and non-optimalSource: Manuel Küblböck

Put up three sections labeled ‘The Good’, ‘The Bad’ and ‘The Ugly’. Give everyone 5 minutes to note down one or more things per category from the last sprint. One aspect per post-it. When the time is up, have everyone stick their post-its to the appropriate labels. Cluster as you collect, if possible.

Discuss the 12 agile principles and pick one to work onSource: Tobias Baier

Print the principles of the Agile Manifesto onto cards, one principle per card. If the group is large, split it and provide each smaller group with their own set of the principles.

Explain that you want to order the principles according to the following question: 'How much do we need to improve regarding this principle?'. In the end the principle that is the team's weakest spot should be on top of the list.

Start with a random principle, discuss what it means and how much need for improvement you see, then place it in the middle. Pick the next principle, discuss what it means and sort it relatively to the other principles. You can propose a position depending on the previous discussion and move from there by comparison. Repeat this until all cards are sorted.

Now consider the card on top: This is presumeably the most needed and most urgent principle you should work on. How does the team feel about it? Does everyone still agree? What are the reasons there is the biggest demand for change here? Should you compare to the second or third most important issue again? If someone would now rather choose the second position, why?

Discuss the 12 agile principles and pick one to work onSource: Tobias Baier

Print the principles of the Agile Manifesto onto cards, one principle per card. If the group is large, split it and provide each smaller group with their own set of the principles.

Explain that you want to order the principles according to the following question: 'How much do we need to improve regarding this principle?'. In the end the principle that is the team's weakest spot should be on top of the list.

Start with a random principle, discuss what it means and how much need for improvement you see, then place it in the middle. Pick the next principle, discuss what it means and sort it relatively to the other principles. You can propose a position depending on the previous discussion and move from there by comparison. Repeat this until all cards are sorted.

Now consider the card on top: This is presumeably the most needed and most urgent principle you should work on. How does the team feel about it? Does everyone still agree? What are the reasons there is the biggest demand for change here? Should you compare to the second or third most important issue again? If someone would now rather choose the second position, why?

Draw a table with 3 columns. Head the first one 'Destination', the second one 'Delay' and the last one 'Announcement'.

Introduce the scenario: 'You are at a train station. Where is your train going? (It can be anything, a fictional or a real place.) How much of a delay does the train currently have? And what is the announcement? Why is there a delay? (This can be a real reason or modeled after the typical announcements.)'

Each team member fills out 3 sticky notes, 1 for each column. Going around the circle, each team member posts their notes and explains briefly, why they're going to destination X and why there's a delay (or not).

Trains and train delays are very familiar in Germany. Depending on your country and culture you might want to pick a different mode of transportation.

Hand out pens and paper. Each participant writes down what they wish their coworkers would learn (as a team - no need to name individual people). When everyone is done, collect all items on a board and count how often each one appears. Pick the top three things as learning objectives, unless the team's discussion leads somewhere else.

Hand out pens and paper. Each participant writes down what they wish their coworkers would learn (as a team - no need to name individual people). When everyone is done, collect all items on a board and count how often each one appears. Pick the top three things as learning objectives, unless the team's discussion leads somewhere else.

In which situations do we incur this type of waste?
Where do we do a good job of avoiding this type of waste?

Break into groups of 2-3 people, preferably with a mix of roles in the groups. This helps to build awareness of the waste everyone else is dealing with on your team. Then, each group selects their first topic and spends a short amount of time writing post-its to answer the two questions above. Limit it to 2 or 3 minutes per topic and 2 post-its per person for each topic to avoid getting swamped with data. When the timebox is up, each group cycles to the next category until everyone has had an opportunity to contribute to each.

What themes are emerging? What do participants notice? Use dot-voting to decide which topics are important enough to further discuss in the next phase.